What is this?

There is World Tendency and Character Tendency. While World Tendency has events which affect a World, Character Tendency has its own risks and rewards and adds special content as well. Character tendency is roughly analogous to an 'alignment' or 'karma' for your character. Your character's tendency is independent of the world tendencies. Similarly it affects the difficulty, and at Pure White or Pure Black, adds some content to the game. Character Tendency carries over to new games.

Killing friendly NPCs/vendors or invading as a Black Phantom moves you towards Black.

What does it do?

Character Tendency affects difficulty and at Pure White or Pure Black, adds some content to the game. Character Tendency is independent of World Tendency for the most part. Resulting amount of maximum Soul Form HP is affected by both Character Tendency and World Tendency (see table).

What is mine right now?

my character's so bright …
I gotta wear shades

You can get a rough view of your character's tendency in game by viewing the statue at the center of the archstone status display menu. If the statue is glowing bright blue, your character tendency is white. If your character is darkened (black), your character tendency is towards black. The image shown on the right is a character in pure white tendency.

Defeating any of these will shift the Character Tendency 20% from Neutral towards White. Defeating all five will move the Character Tendency from Neutral to Pure White (it takes two playthroughs, or 10 kills, to go from pure black to pure white offline). Killing these will also move the World Tendency +3 towards white.

If the killing blow towards a named NPC black phantom is dealt by means of Soulsucker or any source of poison/plague damage, there will be no change in Character Tendency. If a Black Phantom falls to their death it will also prevent any change to character tendency.

Towards Black

Using Blue Eye Stone in the World 3 -- Tower Of Latria. You will sometimes to be summoned by the Old Monk to be a Black Phantom; which will lower your Character Tendency, if you beat the host player. You can keep doing this as many times as you like until your Character Tendency is Pure Black. It doesn't require the killing of NPC's, and is safer than invading with the Black Eye Stone. ( You may use the Black Eye Stone in 3-1 to be summoned by the Monk. Note that this does not mean you will be summoned by the monk the first try, and you do not have to wait to be summoned at 3-3. This has been confirmed by many players. )

You can also "force" the Old Monk to summon you if you use the Black Eye Stone in 3-3. You can use the stone in the small chamber at the bottom of the tower's steps, close to the Maneater Archstone. You may have to move some distance from the Archstone. If the invasion fails, there was no player available to challenge.

If summoned for the Old Monk, your tendency will only change if you actually kill the other player yourself. It's possible that the other player will die getting to you. You may still receive the Monk's Head Collar, but it won't shift your Character Tendency.

Killing four or five harmless NPCs (depending on current Character Tendency) will take you from Pure White to Pure Black. Below is a list of relatively harmless (won't hurt your game if dead) NPCs that you can kill to shift the character tendency.

Nexus - Blue Phantom NPC the Crestfallen Warrior (-2). If you don't speak to him, he'll remain in the Nexus for the duration of the game, or until you kill him. If you exhaust his dialogues to "aggh who are you I don't remember" and reload he'll drop a Storied Soldiers Soul.

No change

Killing any NPC (deal the final blow) with Soulsucker, Poison Cloud, Death Cloud, or other environmental kills (death by falling, bonfire, poison or plague) will not trigger a change in Character Tendency. This applies to Black and Blue Phantoms as well. Note that World Tendency changes will still take effect for the death of a special named NPC.

There are other Black Phantom NPCs that will not adjust your Character Tendency either, such as the two BPs in the Crystal Lizard nest tunnel in Stonefang (2-2) or the three Black Phantoms that appear just beyond the Penetrator's hall (1-4).